We have just got back from the beekeepers' annual dinner. When I first joined, quite a long time ago, it used to be dubbed the Christmas meal, and I recall eating a series of slightly dodgy plates of turkey and all the trimmings at various pubs. There may even have been paper hats. In recent years the date has been brought back to mid November, when members' diaries are less crowded, and the attempt at an ersatz Christmas lunch has been abandoned, along with the hats. Which is fine by me, and I suspect the majority of the other beekeepers. Most British adults do not honestly enjoy sitting in a public place with a slightly too small crenellated circle of magenta tissue paper perched on their head.
This year we went to a restaurant in Frinton that was willing to let us book their entire dining room for the evening. We'd eaten their food before, albeit at a previous venture when they were tenants in a local pub, and knew the cooking would be up to scratch. It was a good meal, and the staff did pretty well at making sure all diners were fed at almost the same time. We'd chosen what we wanted to eat in advance, as is standard for club suppers, and there were no awkward mismatches on the night.
It is quite difficult finding a venue to accommodate thirty or forty people for a meal and do it to a budget. This is not just a provincial problem. Friends in London who thought they might like to throw a lunch party to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary a few years back gave up after searching in vain for an affordable north London eaterie able and willing to cater for around fifty. Restaurants don't want to give over their entire facilities and risk turning away their regular or local passing trade, or the tables are split between too many separate areas so that guests can't mingle and it doesn't feel like a single party. Hotels with conference facilities want to charge for the room as well as the food, so that the cost per head becomes more than some people want to pay, and certainly more than the food merits. And the public rooms of some of the hotels around here are about as atmospheric as a dentist's waiting room.
There's the thorny question of what sort of food. One of the local colleges that does catering courses has a dining room available for bookings willing to act as paying guinea pigs for the students to practice upon. The beekeepers tried it a few years ago, but got complaints from some members that the menu was too fancy. This year we looked at one of the hotel cum conference outfits, but they would have required us to choose one menu and for everybody to eat the same thing. You can get away with that at a wedding breakfast, though even then you need to make provision in advance for vegetarians and people with genuine allergies, but not at a club event when people are paying for themselves with the option of simply not going this year.
Parking is an even thornier problem. The beekeepers are a reasonably fit lot, on the whole, but some can't walk too far, or their partners can't. Most of them would rather not pay to park, and really wouldn't like walking through central Colchester to get back to their cars at gone ten at night. We've racked our brains in committee meetings, but never come up with anywhere we could hold our dinner in Colchester, other than the college's practice dining room. That leaves us looking at pubs and restaurants in the surrounding towns and villages, which means that wherever we choose is going to be the wrong side of town for somebody. Tonight a member who is a teacher at a Colchester school had drawn the shortest straw, having been clobbered with a parents' evening, and then having to chase out to Frinton afterwards.
So all in all I am very grateful to the person who volunteers to organise the meal. My contribution was limited to remembering to take the beekeepers' cheque book so that we could pay for it.
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